


Dead and Gone

by d__T



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, Francis Crozier is a Sad Bitch, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d__T/pseuds/d__T
Summary: Aglooka thinks about his death and avoids an old friend.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	Dead and Gone

**Author's Note:**

> look, the prompt was perfectly normal and then I, a vaguely victorian goth, wrote an Actual Sad Victorian thinking about death and proceeded to make the most depressing thing I've ever written. So like, you're welcome? Be careful?
> 
> The Netsilik Hunter was not given a name in canon. I've picked a name for him, and also invented Palla and Hitkoak.

He's been here for two years now. If he's counting, that would be 1850, but he's not counting, not anymore. Time doesn't work here like it does in England; there are no days, no weeks, no months. A person lives by his sleep schedule and the migrations of the animals. 

The curse is breaking. The land animals are returning, and Ivaluqut's people do not face starvation for his mistakes. He would volunteer to stop eating before anyone else to keep them alive, and has. 

He has made himself useful for two years. He has learned to hunt and to fish with one hand, to make his own spear-points and tools, and to tan the hides for clothing with his teeth. But he cannot do the sewing; it requires two hands. He brings it to Palla, Ivaluqut's mother, and every time she scolds him for being a shitty wife to Ivaluqut, smiles her big gap toothed smile, and splits the sewing sinew on one of her remaining teeth. He sits with her, holds things for her, and tans the hides for her. 

He's been dead for two years. He's no wife, no husband to Ivaluqut; he is the ghost of a nightmare that won't quite fade the way that it should. The buttons from his old coat live in a little bag inside Ivaluqut's parka like Silna's charms used to.

Two years, waiting to finish dying. He watches Ivaluqut's children for him. 

There's a rumor from a group further north of them; another kabloonat called agluka. He wonders who this other land-bound sailor is, if this is the man that Ivaluqut will lie to for him, and finish his slow death. 

They come in the spring, after the night is done and the snow lays blinding on the savaged rock. Eight men and a sledge-boat, the eternal hope of Europeans that they'll find open water. He doesn't wait to see who they are. He goes to Palla to hide behind like a little boy behind his mother's skirts, nevermind that he's nearly twice her size. She calls for Hitkoak and tells her to be his eyes, to run and tell them when the white men have gone to speak with Ivaluqut.

Hitkoak scampers off, excited to do child sized crimes with adult permission, and he sits, far too alive for a dead man. Hitkoak scrambles back in a small eternity later, a single heartbeat. She says that one of the men has red hair, brighter than his. He swallows his heart and goes to eavesdrop.

Ross’s voice, and the other stays unidentified but speaks the language. He feels stricken, a living bug with a needle through its thorax, broken like Ross’s voice when Ivaluqut tells him that he is dead.

He’d loved him, as close as men could be, and they are free now of obligation.

He hides again when Hitkoak elbows him, turning his back and pretending to be anything other than crying.

Ross takes his buttons and his grief and leaves him free.


End file.
